


We've got all the time in the world.

by stellarbird



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 19:26:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarbird/pseuds/stellarbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“My name is Aradia,” she says cheerfully, pulling Rose along. “Keep to the walls, we don’t want anyone to see you.”<br/>“Then the underground police would take me in and subject me to all sorts of unmentionable horrors for being a “surface-dweller,” I presume.”<br/>“Yes, that’s exactly right!” Aradia turns to her, her eyebrows raised in pleased surprise. “You’re smarter than I thought you were!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	We've got all the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mimicre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimicre/gifts).



> This was an absolutely fantastic prompt! I wish I could have written it the fic it deserves, but I really enjoyed writing this one, so thank you very much. I hope you enjoy it, and don't mind too much that worldbuilding was sometimes sacrificed for sad lesbians.

It is a drizzly day in mid-winter, and Rose Lalonde is very emphatically not bored.

She is sitting at one of the afternoon teas that her mother always (with overly deliberate kindness and consideration) informs her that she is not _required_ to attend. Rose smiles demurely and responds that she would find it a pleasure to sit and nibble on too-dry biscuits and discuss the relative merits of crocheted versus knitted lace.

There is only so much, however, that can be said about lace, and the fact that Rose is _very emphatically not bored_ does not mean that she is at all interested in the conversation. That is why she finds herself staring out the window at the fog-filled streets outside, and that is why she sees the girl.

She is slender and pale, probably about Rose’s age and height, but with darker, voluminous hair that seems to move on its own. Her clothing is strange, a sort of tunic. Peering into alleyways and storefront windows, staring at street signs and cracks on the pavement, she scampers along the street; there is something arrestingly alien about her movement, as though she is unused to fog and steel and – _and an automobile, driving straight towards her -_

Rose starts in her chair, about to call out to someone who cannot possibly hear her, but the car has already sped away and there is nothing left in the road. There is no corpse and no girl huddled at the side of the road in shock.

“Rose?”

She realizes that her mother is calling her name, has been calling her name. “Rose, are you all right?”

Rose turns to her mother, looks her in the eyes, and says, “Yes, I’m fine. What was that you were saying about Tunisian crochet, Mrs. Waverly?”

After her mothers’ guests leave, she examines the spot of the non-accident. There is no trace of the strange girl. She walks along the street herself for a little while, looking for anything peculiar enough to merit examination, but finds nothing.

The next day Rose is sitting by the window, ostensibly grading her charges’ French lessons. A flicker of darting movement catches her eye and she glances up, holds, for a moment, a locked gaze between startled eyes, then hurries outside. She will not miss her target again.

She has barely left her house when a hand closes on her wrist and she is pulled downward, nearly collapsing onto the other person. Her mouth flies open, and a hand closes it. There is a blink, a sort of stretching of the universe, and suddenly Rose finds herself sitting on the ground in a world where something seems ever so slightly off-kilter. Sitting in front of her is the girl from the day before.

“Why were you staring at me?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

She purses her lips, tilts her head to the side, frowns. “I’m not used to people noticing me when I’m up here,” she says, sounding genuinely puzzled.

“Up here?”

She frowns again, then grins. “Maybe this has a deeper meaning!” she says. “Destiny and the future were never really my area, but maybe the fact that you can see me means that you’re special among surface-dwellers.”

“From your rather self-explanatory diction, then, I assume that you live underground?”

“Yes, that’s right,” she says, smiling. “I like coming up here to look at things sometimes, but I’ve never talked to anyone before! Come on!” She jumps to her feet, pulling Rose with her. Rose feels herself being pulled up, feels the strange quality of the air, and realizes that she knows what is strange about the world around her.

“Why has everything stopped?”

“I paused it for a little bit so we could talk,” the girl says. “It won’t last long, so we should hurry before someone sees you.” She pulls her across the street, to the steel wall of the watchmaker’s store. “Steel is easier to move through, so I’ve set up a gate here,” she says matter-of-factly, and Rose has no time to process this rather unexpected set of facts before she finds herself being _pulled through_ the steel and out of another wall. She braces herself against it, breathing hard, while the _time-freezing, solid-metal-traversing_ stranger picks up a lantern, lights it, and stands there impatiently.

“You’re very slow,” she says critically, while Rose wheezes for a bit before she can stabilize herself enough to snark, “Yes, please forgive me for being slightly surprised by the fact that I appear to have walked through what would normally be sufficient to grant me a swift and unpleasant death.”

“You didn’t have to be scared,” she says. “I wasn’t going to do anything that would hurt you!”

“I had absolutely no way to know that,” Rose huffs, “seeing as I hardly know anything about you, including your name.”

“My name is Aradia,” she says cheerfully, pulling Rose along. “Keep to the walls, we don’t want anyone to see you.”

“Then the underground police would take me in and subject me to all sorts of unmentionable horrors for being a “surface-dweller,” I presume.”  
“Yes, that’s exactly right!” Aradia turns to her, her eyebrows raised in pleased surprise. “You’re smarter than I thought you were!”

“I was joking,” Rose says hastily. “What, you’re saying there are really underground police that will arrest me for being from aboveground?”

“They’re very suspicious about your kind of people here,” the other girl says matter-of-factly. “Really there is no harm about you people, though! I’ve been watching you for a while, and in terms of architecture at least you seem a lot like us. What did you say your name was?”

“I don’t believe I did.  It’s Rose.”

“Rose? That’s a lovely name. Are people usually named after flowers where you live?”

“No, more often they’re named after saints in a sort of appeal to the heavens for a successful child to validate them in their old age. Or royalty, which is only a more mundane sort of sainthood, I suppose.”

“Hm, that’s very interesting,” she says. “I’ve spent more time aboveground than nearly anyone else under here and I would never have imagined anything like that! What do you do up there? Do you have a job?”

“I am a governess,” she says, slightly stiffly. Aradia’s nose wrinkles slightly, and Rose adds icily, “It’s a quite proper occupation, actually, and not at all-“

“What’s a governess?”

“Oh.” Rose feels herself deflate. “You weren’t – I see.”

“Did you think I was mocking you? Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that, Rose! I am very fond of you already.”

They are walking through twisting streets and alleyways, with peeling street signs on the street corners and dusty signs waiting for a nonexistent breeze. Everything looks very old.

“There aren’t any people here,” Rose notes.

“This isn’t a very used part of the city,” Aradia explains. “Most people live farther on the inside, where the major civic offices and cultural centers are! They think the outer city is kind of spooky, I’m not really sure why.”

One of the older-looking signs falls off with a snap, sending a variety of insects and a very large spider skittering across the ground. A painted picture of what appears to be a king leers at Rose from another sign, nearly all the paint faded away except for a crown and a too-toothy grin.

“Yes,” she says. “I don’t see how they could get that impression at all.”

 

After about ten minutes of walking, they can start to hear voices, and the clamor of something that sounds like a marketplace. Aradia pulls Rose into a small abandoned house with the door hanging ajar, and whispers for her to stay there. So she sits and thinks.

She isn’t alone for long before Aradia returns, a hooded cloak in her arms. Rose puts it on. The dull orange garment covers her face, her arms, her clothing.

“These precautions, I assume,” Rose murmurs, “are to prevent anyone from seeing the tell-tale shade of my skin and my unfamiliar clothing and knowing me for a ‘surface-dweller?’”

“Exactly. Try not to talk too much. Can you see all right?”

“Well enough.” Surprisingly, it’s true. Her hood serves as a sort of one-way mirror between her and this world.

The marketplace is crowded, full of people with the same pale gray skin as her companion and people who look, well, a little less like people. The noises are the same as any aboveground open-air market, however – full of people arguing and bartering, complaining about goods that aren’t as good as claimed and money that comes too little or too late. They are dressed in a sort of medieval fashion, long gowns and tunics and hose, but what stands out the most are the weapons. They are everywhere: jewelled daggers and swords and carved bows for show, and sometimes when someone shifts Rose can see smaller, deadlier weapons hidden behind a flap of clothing. She can see strange colours of light flickering in lamps, dolls that dance of their own accord, a snake that twists into a ring and back again, its small jewelled eyes shining in lamplight. Magic.

“Why are we here?” she murmurs into Aradia’s ear.

“I thought you might want to see the market.”

They stop by a small booth where a man with long white hair is selling mushrooms: small dark ones that look like olives, twisting red ones that flare out at the bottom, larger white ones almost the size of Rose’s hand and the pale grayish tint of Aradia’s cheek. Aradia says something to him in a low voice, and he looks around quickly before bringing out a wooden box. Inside are what Rose recognises as tea leaves, and something that looks like dried fruit. While Aradia and the man conduct their business, Rose looks around and sees a small black cat by her feet, and almost instinctively leans down to rub its head.

It hisses at her, snarling, rears onto its hind legs, and leaps down the street. Rose would swear that before it disappears, she sees it shift and grow into a dark-furred manlike creature, half-walking and half-crawling through the crowd.

Aradia sees her staring and smiles.

They walk through the market a little more, Aradia stopping and making a few purchases – a few dried greens here, sticks of bread there, oil, matches. As they walk by a stall with small spits of meat roasting over a flame, Rose’s stomach rumbles and Aradia looks at her in concern.

“Oh, it’s time for your dinner!” she exclaims. “I don’t eat regular meals, I’m so sorry. Do you want to stop and get something to eat?”

She buys a few pieces of meat from the dark-haired man at the stall. His ears are pointed, almost doglike, and when he sees Rose staring from behind her hood he gives her a fanged grin.

The meat is good, although unlike anything Rose has tasted before (she suspects rat, given the skinny stump of tail on one of the pieces) and the two eat quietly, sitting at a low wooden table inside one of the buildings that seems to serve as a kind of pub. The mood is similarly pub-like, but with a brooding tension. Another clump of men walks through the door, their voices loud and raised in argument.

“The empress has made it clear that the raids are to continue,” one of them says coldly, and another one retorts, “At what cost? There’s nearly fifty dead already, and seven more lost to who knows where.”

“It’s that curse, mind you,” another voice calls out from the pub, and the first man says, “ _There is no curse_ ,” but the mood has shifted against him and someone calls out angrily that yes, it’s the curse, that it came with those who went aboveground and it should have stopped with them.

“It’s like a plague,” a woman croaks. “And like a plague it’s spread by rats, rats that go up instead of down. We should’ve known better than to keep going back up there, and we should’ve known better than to let those that did stay with us.”

“We’d be dead without the surface,” a young man yells out. Cries of denial spring up from around him, but he carries on. “We depend on them for our fuel, for our food – don’t deny it, how many of you have never eaten anything from above ground? The empress can go on all she wants about raids farther out to try and find new food and new territory, but that doesn’t change the fact that she can’t do a single thing to save-“

The man’s head flies back as the first speaker reaches out a hand; he stands several feet away but his victim’s eyes bulge as if he is being choked, and Rose can see a sort of indigo light curling around his throat. The choking man’s comrades jump to their feet, outraged, and Rose can see more tendrils of multicoloured light from around her and hands reaching for weapons.

Aradia grabs her wrist, whispering, “We should leave.”

They manage to slip out a door and weave through the marketplace and out to a less crowded area, with homes that look just short of abandoned.

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“It’s fine."

 

After a few minutes, they reach a small house with a garden of moss in front. Rose looks up, predicting some light source, and is pleased in a smug sort of way to see something glowing and phosphorescent twinkling down at her from about twenty feet up.

“My friend helped me put that up,” says Aradia, who has followed Rose’s gaze. “He’s very intelligent and really useful when you have to lift things, I should introduce you two later! But first, we should discuss the interesting things that we’ve learned today and try and figure out what they portend for the future.”

“You sound like a kindergarten teacher,” Rose starts to say as they walk into the house, but is interrupted by a small white goat which begins to butt its horns against her knee. Aradia pets its head affectionately while lighting a gas lamp and putting out the lantern. “Why don’t you sit down and we can talk?” she says, hanging it up on a hook by the door.

There appears to be a small wooden sofa, and Rose sits. The goat comes and stares at her like it is judging her in its little goat mind, then lowers its head as if to indicate that she has not been found lacking.

“Here’s some tea,” says Aradia, handing her a cup and taking a seat beside her.

Rose is not sure what to say, but is spared the obligation by a loud siren that starts up outside. She turns to look out the window, confused. “What’s going on?”

“That’s the bell for curfew,” Aradia says. “They’re very serious about people keeping curfew, especially with the strife that’s been going on lately.”

“Strife, you say?”

“There have been conflicts – there’s a lot of sentiment against things from aboveground. You heard in the bar. People have been venturing up and getting killed, you see, and that causes a lot of concern. And there have been more deaths recently, diseases and murders and food shortages, and people have been really upset. Especially regarding anything from the surface.”

“Suspicion of the unknown?”

“Yes, exactly! They fear what is unfamiliar, but they don’t realize what our civilizations have in common! I think we were once the same – I’ve found ruins below even us, of an older city, and perhaps there are even more beneath those? Rose, what if each city built in this place was built on the city which existed before? Sometimes I feel like it knows, somehow, how it used to be, like the city is a sentient being which has something in it that understands and _remembers_. Each successive iteration of something depends on and builds on its previous forms.”

“I can name one thing that’s different – we’re horribly mundane up in our world. We don’t have any cat-men or telekinesis or time-stopping. Is it something ... common, among people down here? Magic?”

She shrugs. “Most of us have our little skills,” she says. “I can do some things with time. I can hear the voices of the dead, too.”

“Pleasant.”

“Oh no, it’s not as bad as everyone thinks it is! They are usually very informative, and they have told me a lot about the past. It’s very fascinating! My friend Sollux has it a lot worse, I think. He hears the voices of people who are about to die. They’re usually not very happy.”

“Between the two of you you’ve got the realm of death quite covered, then.”

“Pretty much! Where do you want to sleep?”

“What?” Rose blinks, disoriented by the sudden shift in conversation. “Sleep? Oh no – I’m afraid I should be getting back home soon. My employer will be most put out if I’m not back by ten at the latest.”

“You mean they could terminate your employment if you are late?” Aradia looks horrified. “Oh no, Rose, that is a problem. I’m so sorry! I never meant to cause you problems, I was just so excited because you could see me, and no one else I’ve encountered could do that!”

“Can’t you freeze time, or whatever it is that you did earlier, to let us get back before then? It shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

“I don’t think I can do it that long,” she says, “and not while moving that far. It’s a skill I should have been practicing more, actually.”

“Then I believe we shall have to make a run for it.”

“We will have to be very careful that we will not get caught going back,” says Aradia. “You should probably wear the hood again. They’ll have people patrolling through the streets, and we will both be in a great deal of trouble if anyone sees that you are from aboveground.”

As she speaks, she stands turned slightly away from Rose, fingers moving quickly, lighting the lantern, putting out the lamp, and picking up a whip. Even when she gestures for Rose to follow, she doesn’t look at her.

Seeing as they’re apparently in high danger of being caught by subterranean police for breaking curfew, Rose doesn’t push the issue, but does notice that Aradia seems less talkative than before. They go for quite a bit, for what feels like nearly two-thirds of the way, before they encounter anyone. Aradia stops so sharply that Rose nearly runs into her, and quickly blows out the lantern and backs into an alleyway. Rose can’t hear anything, but the other girl seems to have. They crouch in the darkness for nearly a minute before they hear voices, joking about something having to do with a girl, and light creeps into the alleyway as two men walk by, lanterns or something more sinister clinking slightly. They pause for some reason, no reason, and the two girls shrink farther back while trying not to move at all. One of them lights a cigarette, and Rose can see the smoke’s shadow curling softly on the other wall. The other swings something, a truncheon, a sword, and says something low and sarcastic to the other man, who drops the cigarette and resumes his walk with a disgruntled sigh. Aradia keeps Rose pressed tightly against the wall as they clink away, fading into the darkness.

“That was rather closer to discovery than I find preferable,” Rose murmurs, feeling light-headed and saying something just to break that awful discomfort. Aradia whispers to be quiet, still not looking at her, and maybe it’s the adrenaline from their recent encounter and maybe it’s simple foolishness, but Rose grabs the other girl and stares into her eyes and says, “Why are you avoiding me?”

“I hardly think I’m avoiding you,” Aradia starts to say, but Rose interrupts her. “Have I upset you, then? Do you hate me? Despise me? Resent me?”

“No,” she says quietly. “I’m ashamed ... oh, Rose, I wanted us to be friends so much! I thought we could talk about things, I could tell you about everything that I’ve discovered – the cities beneath this one, the stories in them that I still haven’t seen! There are so many patterns and things that I wanted to talk to you about, so many things and people I wanted to show you, but I never thought about how I’d put you in danger.”

Rose starts to speak, to say something about how despite the danger, this is one of the most wonderful things that has ever happened to her, that she would do it again, that she _insists_ on doing it again, that Aradia is mad if she doesn’t think that Rose would want to come down here and talk about magic and abandoned cities and inter-world political climates, but she never gets the chance because there is another light, bright and almost garish, intruding on them and she can feel Aradia freeze.

“Well, if it isn’t my old friend Aradia Megido,” says a drawling voice, and after Rose’s eyes adjust to the light, she sees a skinny girl with messy black hair, an eyepatch, something that looks like a cutlass, and a tiger’s grin. “Breaking curfew? I thought you were a good girl!”

Aradia’s hand closes on Rose’s wrist, and Rose stays silent. “We got lost,” Aradia says tersely.

“Coming back from one of your digs, then? You are so boring, Megido,” the girl says, rolling her visible eye. “What’s so great about dirt? Don’t answer that, it’ll probably be another boring answer! Well, you two are officially under arrest. And who’s your friend?” She reaches out to draw back Rose’s hood.

Aradia pulls out her whip, and the tip wraps around the girl’s wrist and pulls it back, snags the cutlass, throws it onto the floor, but it’s too late – she’s pulled back the hood, seen Rose’s pale-but-not-pale-enough face, her strange clothing, and her eye opens in understanding as Aradia grabs Rose and the two run down the street, the pirate girl in pursuit.

“You’ll be in great trouble for this one, Megido,” she calls gleefully. “You and your pretty friend! I heard they’re –“ She never gets to finish her sentence because Aradia rips the sign with the grinning king off its hooks with her whip and launches it into her stomach. She bends over, winded, and Rose has been running faster than she has ever run in her life, but somehow she manages to run a little faster as they turn a few corners and run a little farther and are there, at the wall. Aradia touches it and it _ripples_ , and they fall through and are sitting in the alleyway, gulping in breaths of wonderfully fresh air.

“It’s only around nine,” Aradia says quickly. “I think you’ll have enough time. Good bye, Rose-“ she seems as if she is about to say something more, but stops.

“You won’t be in trouble? She saw me.”  
“Everyone knows Serket’s a huge liar,” Aradia says with a bitter sort of laugh. “I’ll be safe.”

“And I’ll see you next week.“

“Rose-“ Aradia starts to speak, and Rose can see that she is about to say every reason why it would be safer for her not to come back, wiser for them to not press their luck again, but she is tired of being safe and wise, and so this time _she_ grabs Aradia, and closes the other girl’s mouth with her own.

The kiss lasts for only a moment before Aradia pulls away, a smile replacing her earlier look of worry, and disappears, falling back through the wall.

 

The next week comes, and Aradia does not appear.

Weakness is something that Rose refuses to show, so she sits by the window and writes red ink over attempts at sonnets and tries not to think about a girl who makes her feel like a summer’s day.

The next week passes similarly. By the third week Rose convinces herself that going back would be a sign of bravery, not weakness, pulls out a burnt orange hood folded in her trunk, takes a lit candle, returns to the alleyway, touches a particular spot on the watch-shop wall, and disappears.

She is surprised that she can remember the way to the house, and she tries to keep to the edges of the streets, ducking whenever she hears noises (which always turn out to be imagined) and trying to figure out what she will say when she reaches her destination.

When she does, she is robbed of any thoughts that she might have had by the sight of a house that is only half there. The other half is rubble.

The door is still intact, and she enters and looks around. The sofa is still there, but the lantern lies on the ground, shattered. Rose walks over to it, picks up the pieces and winces as she cuts herself on one of them. She is still staring at it when someone speaks from behind her, startling her.

“Who are you? Who said you could come in here?”

There is a boy behind her, with glasses and a lisp and a scowl. Rose gathers herself, and replies, “I’m a friend. Of Aradia’s.”

“You’re Rose, aren’t you. From up there. AA – she told me about you.” There is pain in his face, pain that he tries to hide and that Rose is desperately afraid she will later see in herself. “How did you get here?”

“I walked through the gate,” Rose says stiffly.  
“Never heard of a surface-dweller who could do that before.”

“Where’s Aradia?”

His face screws up a little, and he is silent until she repeats her question.

“She’s not here. She’s not anywhere, not anymore.”

“What do you mean?” She doesn’t know what he means, she tells herself, tries to convince herself, trying to avoid the creeping dread crawling up her stomach.

“She’s dead.”

When Rose returns home, she sits on a chair and stares at a blank stretch of wall. There is a piece of glass clenched in her fist, and she is bleeding.

She does not cry.

 

It is another of Mrs. Lalonde’s afternoon teas, and her daughter is sipping a hot cup of Darjeeling and listening to a woman describe the five different types of linen used in her daughter’s trousseau. The topic is extremely uninteresting, and Rose finds her gaze drawn once again to the window. Something gray flickers in the alleyway across the street, and Rose’s hand shakes, spilling hot tea on the knitting in her lap. Around the room, ladies wince in pity.

“Excuse me,” she says, setting down the tea and picking up the knitting, using it as an excuse to flee. She runs into the kitchen, sets the knitting under a tap, runs out the door. Heart pounding, she runs into the alleyway, and there is someone there waiting for her.

“I thought you were dead.”

“I am.”

Aradia stares out at her, her eyes and voice dull.

“You seem to be unusually mobile and talkative for someone dead,” Rose says, her mouth and brain somewhere far ahead of her emotions.

“I don’t know why I’m here.”

“You don’t?”

“I remember...” Aradia closes her eyes for a second, then opens them with that same dull stare. “I remember I had to return here. It was of the utmost importance that I return.”

“I asked you to.”

“Why?”

Because I loved you, Rose thinks. “Because you had something to tell me,” Rose says.

“It isn’t important,” Aradia says. “Not much is.”

“We were going to talk about the ruins,” Rose says. “You had discovered something you found fascinating, about how each successive iteration of something depends on and builds on its previous forms.” There is desperation in her voice now.

For a second there is a look in Aradia’s eyes as if she understands, remembers, but it dies – disappears – and the thing that used to be Aradia says, “I don’t know what you mean,” turns, and leaves.

Rose stands in the alleyway for several minutes, and leaves for her house and returns in the cloak that hides her face. Mask in place, she presses her hand to the wall and runs down an unlit alleyway in a world she does not know, because she currently understands jack shit.

When she reaches the marketplace, a few quiet inquiries are enough to lead her to where she needs to go. The room is illuminated by a few oil lamps, the upholstery and walls all a dark green. Rose pays it no mind; she is much more interested in the man sitting across from her, with a dark green suit that looks more modern than anything she’s seen down here and a blank white face that she is sure must have features, but none that seem to stay in her head.

“You are here for information,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Information is easy,” he says. “True information is somewhat harder, but that, too, can be arranged. Power is even harder, but in your case, my dear young lady, I think we can make an exception.

“I didn’t ask for power,” she starts to say, and stops.

“Have you wondered,” he says, calmly uncovering a smooth white ball, “why you were able to enter this world when so many of your kind are not? Why you were able to see your ... friend when others could not?”

“No,” she says. “I assume that now you’re going to look into the ball and tell me fabricated answers to all my questions, with just enough vagueness to make me believe them? They told me you could tell me anything I needed to know, not that you were some charlatan with a crystal ball.”

He smiles, she thinks. It’s hard to tell.

“It’s not a crystal ball.”

He pushes it towards her. She stares inside, trying to understand, and sees everything.

She sees a girl, black haired and beautiful. She sees her staring into the air with love and terror on her face, she sees her bloodied and broken on the ground. She stares into the ball and the man in front of her smiles. When her face rises again there is something gray and alien about it, and when she leaves the room, her feet do not touch the ground.

Something that is called Rose Lalonde is floating down the street. This house she needs no directions for; in fact, she now needs directions for very little, if anything at all. The hood is thrown back to reveal skin significantly darker than the people walking around her, but no one bothers her because there is something about oozing tendrils of black smoke that tends to keep people away.

When she reaches the house, a coil curls out and throws the door open. Inside there is a girl that she now knows is called Terezi Pyrope but that she has no use for, and she flings her aside and picks up the boy beside her and rams him against the wall. There are chains of smoke wrapping around him, shaking him, and her voice rises in fury and she shrieks at him, wanting to hear him lie, wanting to hear him beg, wanting to hear him apologize, wanting to break him a thousand times over and smash him onto the floor and see the blood spill out, but he doesn’t struggle at all and just _cries_ , makes horrible little keening noises and Rose knows he can fight her, knows he has the strength and the power and knows what he can do and _why isn’t he fighting her_ , and the gray fades from her face and the tentacles of smoke disappear, and she is strangling him with her hands, grabbing at his face, yelling at him, screaming at him, and a pair of sharp hands grab her by the shoulders and wrench her off of him onto the floor. She is being pinned down by Terezi Pyrope, all sharp angles and sharp teeth, who glares at her with unseeing eyes and pain and fury etched in her face and who leans down and whispers, _“You weren’t the only one who loved her_.”

Something inside her breaks, and Rose Lalonde begins to cry.

 

Later Terezi takes her by the hand and tells her the thing that was hidden from her before: the story of a girl who could control murder from behind her tiger’s grin, of a man who sat in his green room and pulled the threads of those around him, but the thing in Rose that thirsted for revenge is dead, and she returns home and burns the cloak.

It burns well.

 

 

_Years in the future, but not many._

It is a cold wet day in January, and Rose Lalonde is going to be late to her class.

She considers it a matter of pride that she is _never_ late, and so she is mildly horrified at the situation she finds herself in. She will walk in late, and all the other students and her professor will look at her in disdain, mocking her tardiness from behind their scholarly eyes. She will have failed the university, and her mother will have been proven right.

Caught up in her thoughts, she slips coming down the stairs, covering her dress in an umbecoming sheen of gray rainwater. She curses indelicately in her head and tries to wipe herself off with her handkerchief, with the result that she neglects to look both ways before crossing the street, and is promptly nearly run over by the new Ford barrelling at her.

She can see it coming at her, unable to move, and Rose Lalonde knows that she is going to _die_ , all because she slipped coming down the stairs, and she feels like she should be somewhat more put out than she actually is, perhaps at least try to get out of the way, but she can only stare at the car rushing towards her until she realizes that it is not, in fact, moving.

Neither is anything else.

She turns and nearly falls over again in surprise.

“You’re dead.”

Aradia shakes her head, eyes no longer dull and dead now shining from beneath a dark red hood, and she smiles, the most beautiful thing Rose has ever seen.

“I am very much alive,” she says, “and I intend to stay that way.”

Aradia starts to explain, but it’s all too much, and Rose can only listen to a few things, a few explanations of death and resurrection and sacrifice and destiny, of power intrinsic that’s almost exactly like magic but isn’t like magic at all, and is forced to admit (for now, at least) that there are things that she simply cannot understand. They stand there, nearly a ton of angry steel and rubber frozen inches from them. Aradia simply stands there and smiles, and Rose tries to fit everything that she is feeling into a workable expression onto her face.

She tries to make some sense of everything, to assess the situation. It seems that her (she’s not quite sure what to call her; ‘beau’ seems too facetious, ‘lover,’ too saccharine, ‘paramour,’ too erudite) her something, her Aradia, is now as close as any living being can get to a physical incarnation of Time.

There is a softness in the air, and a finger brushes delicately against Rose’s cheek.

“Rose,” she says.

She is stuck in the unfamiliar position of not knowing what to say. There are no four-syllable words fighting to come out of her mouth, no biting psychoanalysis, no obfuscating insincerity. There is only emotion, one that has the shape of joy but brings with it a queer, aching kind of pain.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?”

A hand replaces a finger, five fingers and a thumb cradling the curve of her face.

“I can’t think of anything,” Rose hears herself saying.

Aradia laughs, low and filled with an _oldness_ and power that breaks Rose’s heart and with a vitality and joy that patches it back together, and suddenly there is no longer the carefully balanced interplay of hand and cheek, but the much more primal balance of two bodies folding into each other.

“You don’t have to be able to think of anything right now,” Aradia says, a smile creeping over her face. “Why, Rose, we’ve got-“

“Don’t say it,” Rose warns. “Cliche and predictable plays on words are entirely unacceptable for a moment of this magnitude-“

The laugh returns, wrapping around her like a caress, and Aradia kisses her. After a while she pulls away, and Rose can see the joy in her eyes - joy at life and joy at love.

“We’ve got,” Aradia starts to say again, and Rose finishes for her. “All the time in the world.”


End file.
